


beautifully

by weatheredlaw



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alcohol, Comfort Sex, Cunnilingus, Developing Relationship, F/F, Femslash, Fingerfucking, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spies & Secret Agents, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 17:15:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She looks Bobbi straight in the eye, their mouths so close together, breathing each other in, and says, “I want this, too.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	beautifully

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mariachillin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariachillin/gifts).



> Ari made me do it. Lesbian spies.

Bobbi has had dorm rooms bigger than this apartment. She’s pretty sure her closet is bigger than half of it. It might be better if SHIELD hadn’t crammed all their surveillance equipment in what is supposed to be the living room, but desperate times, as the saying goes. Bobbi immediately hits up their kitchen, blissfully stocked and clean, to make tea. 

“I’ll take the couch first tonight.” It’s already stupidly late and Bobbi wants to get a shower and crawl into bed, get a solid six hours before they get too deep into this. 

“It’s a queen,” Bobbi says, looking into the only other room besides the bathroom. “We’ll share, that couch probably has the plague.” Maris snorts, shaking her head and setting down the last of the bags. “Come on, Hill, have a sleepover with me. I don’t snore, I promise.” 

Maria lifts her hands in mock defeat. “Okay, okay. Twist my arm, Jesus.” She goes into the kitchen to get herself a cup of tea. “You ready for the long haul?”

Bobbi raises her chipped cup and Maria does the same. “I’m ready for everything.”

 

 

 

Maria’s already in bed by the time Bobbi finishes her shower, signing off on her SHIELD tablet, filing their initial report. Bobbi mutters almost lazily, “Doors checked?” and Maria gives her a look. “Protocol.” She crawls between the sheets and sighs. “I’ve never been so happy to go to bed. I hate quinjets.”

“Stay on your side,” Maria says, reaching up to turn out the light.

“And _you_ ,” Bobbi snaps back, but she starts yawning halfway through it and by the time she’s thought of anything else to say, she’s asleep. 

 

 

 

“Morse.” Bobbi’s trying to wake up. It’s always hard -- sleep is a trap, sometimes welcome, sometimes a nightmare. “Morse.” _I gave you what you wanted._ “Morse!”

She sits up in bed with a gasp, eyes open wide and wild. “Sorry, _fuck_ , I’m sorry, I--”

Maria is still in bed, laid up with her arms folded over her chest, smirking. Bobbi looks at how much room that’s left between them, comes up with nothing good, and cringes. “We were totally spooning.”

“Mmhm.” Maria grins and pushes herself out of bed. “I always took you for a big spoon, but I’ve been wrong before.”

“I’ve always been the little spoon,” Bobbi says hotly, kicking off the sheets. “It was _cold_ in here. If _someone_ had turned on the radiator--”

“You can just admit that you really wanna snuggle, Morse. It’s fine.” Maria’s already getting a towel and heading for the shower. “Look, if you’re still tired, get another hour.”

“I’m _not--_ ”

“Then go make breakfast.” Bobbi scowls at her retreating back. “Coffee, too! We’re gonna need it.”

Bobbi heads back into the kitchen, sifting through their SHIELD foodstuffs, hauling out the coffee maker and putting enough on to last them a couple of hours. When Maria comes in, Bobbi makes the switch, grabs a shower herself, and comes out to pour her own cup. 

They don’t talk much for the first part of the day. Maria sets up the equipment by the window where they can see out, but no one can see in. The phones have been bugged for a few days now and Bobbi’s been going over the call histories since eight, feeling sluggish by noon after listening to three very awful phone sex conversations. 

“You look a little traumatized,” Maria says as Bobbi’s pulling the headphones off of her head. 

“I can only listen to, ‘Yeah baby suck it,’ in a vapid, robot voice so many times before I start to think my vibrator has better pillow talk.” Maria shakes her head, heading into the kitchen to look for lunch. Bobbi makes an enormous sandwich, sitting down at the table and inhaling half of it before she looks up. “Sorry I cuddled you last night.”

“Seriously? Don’t worry about it.” Maria sits down with another cup of coffee and her own sandwich. “I’ll get the radiator on before we get into bed again, but honestly, it’s not a big deal. Besides.” She points and grins. “You were totally into it.”

“I’m not even gonna lie about it. Cuddling? One of my favorite activities. Clint was a great cuddler. Is. I’m assuming he is, we haven’t cuddled in a good long while.” Maria looks at her plate and Bobbi gets lost for a moment, the way she always does when she thinks about Clint. Her and Clint. What she and Clint used to be. They spent a day together in October, and that was the last time she saw him before now. The past couple years, that’s the way it’s been. They see each other, they talk about what it used to be. Sometimes they fuck. It never makes her happy. They both usually cry after. He buys her dinner. She goes home and cries again.

She isn’t ashamed to cry, but her face reddens when she realizes she’s starting to do it in front of Maria, and she pushes herself out of her chair and goes to the bathroom, taking deep breaths, counting backwards from ten. 

When she comes back out, Maria acts like nothing’s happened, doesn’t ask if she’s okay or needs to talk. There’s just another cup of coffee, filled to the brim and marked white with cream. 

 

 

 

The second morning, Bobbi wakes up with her nose pressed against Maria’s back and neither of them says anything. They untangle from each other, Maria goes to shower, and Bobbi makes coffee. They work, they have lunch, they work, they work through dinner. For four, five, six days, this is their life. 

Sometimes Bobbi wakes up in the throes of a nightmare, a scream on the edge of her voice. She doesn’t remember where she is, who she is, who she’s with -- but suddenly Maria is there, talking her down, forcing her to count, forcing her to go over everything. 

“Who are you? What’s your name? Who am I?”

“I’m Mockingbird. I’m Bobbi. You’re Maria. Mockingbird, Bobbi, Maria. Mockingbird, Bobbi, Maria.”

Maria smiles and tucks her in close, soothing the last vestiges of the nightmare away as Bobbi says it over and over again, a mantra to put her back to sleep. 

 

 

 

“Where’d he go?” Bobbi is peering helplessly through the camera, trying to spot their mark. “Where the _fuck_ did he go?” Maria gets in beside her and starts looking through every window, flips to infrared and still comes up with nothing. She gets on the comm to SHIELD, disappearing into the back while Bobbi flips through readouts, trying to figure out what they missed. 

“Sicily,” Maria announces, coming out of the back. “He’s got a plane, SHIELD’s had an eye on it for a while. Guess he left an hour ago. Coulson says the blueprints--”

“Show he has multiple secret exits, I know. We’ve got eyes on there.”

“Morse.” Maria puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. He’s gonna be back.”

“I don’t give a shit if he comes back, I’m not taking the heat if he’s skipping town for good, I--”

“Coulson says his travel itinerary was leaked to them by a stewardess on his plane. They’ve been in contact with her a while. She says he’ll be back in three days.”

“We done then?”

Maria shakes her head. “Not enough to get him. Coulson says to sit tight, hold down the fort for a few days. If he takes any longer, we pack up and a transport’ll have us out in two hours. That okay with you?”

Bobbi sits back, folding her arms tightly over her chest. “Does it matter?” 

Maria smiles, “Not even a little. Now get up, we’re having a drink.”

 

 

 

Bobbi definitely wakes up at eight with a hangover, and she definitely remembers her and Maria drinking an entire bottle of wine between them and passing out without changing practically on top of one another.

“Good morning, princess.” Maria is too fucking chipper too fucking early. Bobbi groans as she pads into the kitchen, feeling like a train wreck. “Coffee and bacon on the table.”

“Marry me,” Bobbi mutters.

“With your track record?”

“Ha fuckin’ ha.” She takes her perfectly creamed coffee and wolfs down four pieces of bacon before finally taking it all in. “He back yet?”

“Nope. And we’re all out of wine.”

“Probably a good thing.” Maria nods her agreement, sitting down across the table. “I’m kind of a terrible drunk.”

“I’ve met worse,” Maria says reassuringly. “It’s probably better if we don’t.” She looks away, then back. “Do you have those dreams a lot? The ones that wake you up?” Bobbi doesn’t say anything, and it must be answer enough. 

After a while, though, Bobbi figures she owes her something. Or maybe she just needs to talk about it, she doesn’t know. She hasn’t done it voluntarily in years. “Clint used to help me through them, you know? But usually he was working through so much of his own shit, we’d practically wake each other up. He used to sing, and he was terrible at it. So awful. We’d just...we’d talk about what we used to want together. And after a while, that stopped working, because I kept having nightmares about all the things we couldn’t have.

“When we broke it off, I stopped sleeping. I didn’t know how to sleep alone anymore. Maybe that’s why I keep trying to suffocate you in your sleep,” she mutters, shaking her head. Maria smiles. “It’s nice to...to sleep with someone again. Like, literally. Not...not figuratively. I…” She flushes. “Not that you aren’t, you know.”

Maria reaches out and puts a hand over hers. “Hey. It’s okay.” Bobbi grips her fingers. “I know.” 

 

 

 

Like clockwork, the nightmares come. Bobbi wrenches awake, but this time she knows where she is, and she knows who’s next to her. She knows what she wants.

“Maria.”

“Say it. Say it to me.”

“Mockingbird, Bobbi, Maria.” Maria reaches out, cupping Bobbi’s face in her hands. “Maria, Maria, Maria.” Bobbi practically lunges forward, thrusting their lips together, tongues sweeping in, tasting, trying to feel. “Maria--”

“Let me take care of you.”

Bobbi moans, wanton and pathetic. 

Of course she wants someone to take care of her, and that hits right at the pit of her stomach, sticks in her like gum and glue that she wants someone to _take care of her._ It hits her even harder that she wants it to be Maria, that she just _wants_ Maria, wants her more than she’s realized, even though she knows it was there all along. 

Maria snakes her hands under Bobbi’s shirt, lifting it up and over her head. She kisses down her chest, over her breasts. Bobbi shudders under her hands, lets her work her sweats off her legs and breathe over her cunt. “ _Maria--_ ”

“I said I’d take care of you, baby. Let me take care of you.”

Bobbi nods, tipping her head back and letting Maria kiss a line up her thigh before she draws her tongue over her cunt, dipping inside and reaching up to press a thumb to her clit. Bobbi draws in a sharp breath, looks down to watch. She hasn’t come with another person between her legs in months, hasn’t wanted to in even longer. It doesn’t take any time at all for her to let go, to completely lose herself in the steady thrust of Maria’s fingers, the quick flick of her tongue on her clit. 

“Maria--” Bobbi pulls her up, shoves their mouths together again and licks the taste of herself off Maria’s lips. She’s already shoving her hand down Maria’s shorts, kissing her neck and trying desperately to get her off. Maria’s climax is subtler than Bobbi’s own -- just a quick intake of breath and Bobbi feels her clenching around her fingers, moaning into her ear. “S’good?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. Jesus, Morse.” Maria kisses her now, goes slow as she takes off her own clothes, laying them out so they can touch every bit of each other. Bobbi hasn’t felt this good in months, probably years. The tension leaks out of her as Maria brings her over the edge, as Bobbi makes her come. It’s close to one in the morning when they’ve finally worn each other out, their murmurings to one another practically incoherent. 

“I’m so tired,” Bobbi says quietly, struggling with the bedsheets. Maria’s laughter sounds almost drunk, like a bell ringing sweetly in the air between them. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

“Stop stealing my lines.”

Bobbi grins, tucking her head down. “We’re gonna get in so much trouble.”

Maria shrugs. “Probably. Don’t care.” She tucks a piece of hair behind Bobbi’s ear. “It feels pretty damn worth it.”

 

 

 

Bobbi’s new favorite sound is Maria’s breathing, right before she falls asleep, right after they fall into bed together, after she’s made her come, after they’ve kissed until they can’t anymore, until it almost aches to move.

Yeah, that’s the sound she loves.

 

 

 

A week after that first night together, Bobbi wakes up and Maria’s head is tucked under her chin, every angle fitting right against her. She’s warm, they’re both warm, and Bobbi realizes with a jolt that they’ve slept in. Their mark’s back in town, they have work to do. She thinks about moving Maria, about moving them both, but it feels good being right here, feels like she should just stay a bit longer, enjoy the moment. She doesn’t know exactly how long it takes her to doze off again, but when she wakes up, Maria is still asleep and it’s already almost ten in the morning. 

She extracts herself from the bed and Maria just shifts, turns over and sighs, still asleep. Bobbi makes coffee, comes back and sits on the bed, just as Maria is finally waking up.

“ _Shit._ ” She sits upright, looking confused. “What time is it?”

“After ten. Coffee?”

“Why am I in bed?”

“We overslept.”

“Did you--”

“I checked the video logs, checked the phones. No change from yesterday. _Relax_ , Hill.” Maria does not look relaxed. Like, at all. She looks even more tense and she ignores the cup of coffee Bobbi’s trying to hand her and kicks off her sheets, heading straight for the living room. “Maria--”

“Check the logs again.” She finally takes the mug and starts printing out their report from the night before. “I’ll start taking night watch, we’re due for that this week anyway.” 

“I can take it first, I’m--”

Maria turns around, says, voice thin and alien, “I’ve got it, Morse.” Bobbi shivers, not liking or understanding the sudden change in tone between them. Bobbi reaches out to touch, to run a hand down Maria’s arm, but Maria shifts away.

That night, Bobbi sleeps in the queen bed alone, and wakes up in the morning very, very cold.

 

 

 

“Okay. I need you to tell me what the fuck is happening.” 

Maria looks up from where she’s filing their last report. Recon work always makes Bobbi feel useless, because you do all the work and someone gets to swoop in and take all the glory for catching the fucker. But for the first time, Bobbi’s not really thinking about that. 

She’s thinking about how she hasn’t touched Maria for three days and it’s definitely affecting her ability to think straight at all when she’s around. 

“I’m filing our report, Morse.”

“No.” Bobbi pulls the paperwork out of her hand. “I mean why are you acting like a frigid bitch all of a sudden.”

“That’s a little uncalled for, don’t you think?”

Bobbi’s getting sick of the bullshit, so she just fucking goes for it. “Why did you stop sleeping with me?” It doesn’t really work. Maria wrenches the papers out of her hand just in time for SHIELD to show up. 

They’re separated for the debriefing when they finally get back to the helicarrier. Bobbi doesn’t mention the sex in her report, and it doesn’t seem Maria does either, because no one asks about it. 

Which is good, right? She can start forgetting about it. Sure, she sees Maria basically every day. But she sees Clint pretty much all the time, too, and it’s not awkward -- except when it is. But this is going to be okay. They’re professionals. 

 

 

 

Except Bobbi’s never really claimed to be a professional. So when she shows up at Maria’s place in the middle of the night, trembling, a month after they finished their mission, it isn’t really a surprise. 

The surprise comes when Maria takes her in. 

“We’re a terrible idea, Bobbi.”

Bobbi shakes her head. “You don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. We’re good for each other. You’re good for me.”

“It was a few weeks of--”

“Please don’t say nothing. _Please_ , whatever you’re going to say, don’t say nothing.” She reaches out. “Because it was _more_ than that to me. Maria.”

Maria looks down, gives a little huff of laughter and says quietly, “I’m hard to love, Bobbi.”

“Hey.” Bobbi cups Maria’s chin in her hand, lifting her head to look her right in the eye. “Me, too. You can ask Clint, if you want.”

“I don’t want to. Not even a little.”

“Good. Because that’s a bad idea.” 

Maria tips her head forward, pressing their foreheads together. “I got nervous. You scared me. All I could do was push you away, hope you’d move on.”

“Not really my style,” Bobbi murmurs. They breathe in together, out together. Bobbi presses her lips to Maria’s, and Maria presses back. “I want this.”

Maria nods, gripping Bobbi’s hands in her own. It feels like they’re swearing to something, making promises not just to themselves, promising the stars and everything else they’ll make this work. Bobbi kisses her, close to stealing the words from her mouth, but Maria pulls back. She breathes, looks like she _wants_ to say it, wants to make promises, too. She looks Bobbi straight in the eye, their mouths so close together, breathing each other in, and says, “I want this, too.”

And that’s enough for them. For now. That’s enough.


End file.
